In 2022, Grand Theft Auto 6 suffered a massive, unprecedented leak, giving players a very early look at the still-in-development open-world sequel. Four years later, and just a few weeks before GTA 6′s release on November 19, Rockstar North’s head of development and co-studio head Aaron Garbut explained how it felt to see the leak spread online.
On October 14, Bloomberg published an in-depth and lengthy report about Rockstar’s work on GTA 6 and how it has expanded to become one of the biggest game developers in the world. And in the report, Garbut talked openly about seeing unfinished clips of GTA 6 circulating all across the internet and described how it felt in the moment.
“It feels like somebody’s wading through your dirty washing,” said Garbut. “It’s like they’re inside your head. You see your early work out there. Nobody’s ever supposed to see that.”
The longtime Rockstar vet who has worked on the GTA franchise since the very first game also said that it felt “weirdly invasive” to see those clips online, adding that it was “quite hard to deal with on an emotional level.”
Following the 2022 leak, Rockstar Games started reversing some of its work-from-home policies and practices, and in 2024 all employees had to be back in the office five days a week. The company cited security concerns for the return-to-office policy. Rockstar also banned all devs from accessing the company’s servers and tools from home, forcing them to use vacation or sick days if they needed to stay home for childcare or other emergencies. Rockstar Games plans to reexamine its policies after GTA 6 ships, but head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe doubted the studio would move back to a hybrid model any time soon.
“The idea that we would have the game in that many environments is something that I think the security team would not love,” explained Kolbe.
“I think if we did not have a game that people wanted to steal as much, maybe it would be an easier conversation.”
Despite these restrictions, in August, Cyberleek began sharing Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay leaks online. Bloomberg reports this led to frustration at the studio, as devs felt they had sacrificed much and it didn’t matter in the end, as leaks still happened. On Wednesday, Cyberleek claimed to be done leaking GTA 6 clips.